Your Best Contractors Are Being Poached:
Why, How & What to Do About It

2016 Trends In Staffing & Recruitment – A LinkedIn Survey

A recent LinkedIn survey on staffing & recruitment trends in 2016 got our attention here at SMCI. The survey highlighted a vulnerability for companies that we at SMCI have been actively working to remediate for some time. Namely, that your best talent are being actively recruited every day and how this increase is leaving companies vulnerable to historically high turnover.

Essentially, this stems from the fact that contractors specifically, but also full-time employees, are increasingly seeking out and entertaining offers of employment from competitors. And these offers are coming all the time. That’s simply the economic landscape we’re currently living in.

This vulnerability, however, doesn’t have to leave your organization at constant risk of losing your best contract employees. Understanding the landscape and the mindset of this workforce can help significantly lower your exposure in such a fickle employment environment.

So what are you doing to attract, retain and manage your contract staff? At SMCI, our focus extends far beyond the initial hire and looks at things like management and retention techniques that will keep your workforce working for you, instead of your competition.

The Basics of the LinkedIn Survey

LinkedIn, the business oriented social network geared toward professional networking, recently conducted a survey that looked at staffing and recruitment trends in 2016.

The LinkedIn survey illustrates the modern recruitment landscape and its increasing reliance on contract, or contingent, employees. In fact, over the past decade the number of contingent employees in the U.S. (temps, on-call workers, contractors, self-employed and part-time workers) has risen 36%. That’s a huge portion of the American workforce that isn’t exactly on the team, even though they might be playing a key role.

The survey examined current trends amongst contractors and full-time talent regarding their willingness, and preferred method of seeking out a new job. It also looked at the contrasting experiences contractors and full-time employee experience during the recruitment process.

Who Are Your Contractors Talking To?

According to the report, both full-time workers and contractors are more than happy to speak to a recruiter about that potential new job opportunity.

In fact, 84% of participants in the LinkedIn study said that they would be interested in speaking with a recruitment firm or headhunter. This is great news for your recruitment efforts, but not so great news if you don’t have a strong retention program in place.
LinkedIn also reported an increase in the overall number of contractors using their social network platform. That’s big news considering the size of LinkedIn’s total network… 433 million users.

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With 84% of your workforce open to discussions with recruiters, it’s more important than ever to have an experienced staffing firm working for your company to bring in the right hires, which ensures lower turnover and is also ready with a pool of pre-qualified candidates ready to step in should an employee leave unexpectedly.

Contractors Are Always Looking For the Next Opportunity

The LinkedIn survey also revealed some interesting information about the different behavior of contractors as opposed to their full-time employee counterparts.

Contractors are more likely to do things like update their resume, network and research jobs. All of which lead to a higher percentage of contractors applying for a job. According to the survey, they do so 14% more than full-time employees.

Now that’s not to say that full-time talent isn’t willing to hear from recruiters as well, it simply indicates that contractors might be slightly more receptive. With nearly 41% of America’s workforce employed on a contingent basis, this number’s significance is clear.

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Let’s face it, your team is constantly being bombarded with offers from competitors and other companies vying for the top talent in the industry. If you don’t have a strategy in place, you could be exposed to the unnecessary risk of high turnover.

What Contractors Want

What good would a survey be without providing some usable tips on how to leverage all that data? By understanding why a contractor might be interested in a new job, recruiters and experienced staffing firms are better prepared to emphasize this information to a candidate when onboarding new hires so that they are less likely to be lured away by another company.

The Top 3 Factors Influencing a Move:
• 30% wanted more challenging work
• 26% lacked opportunities for career advancement
• 23% were unhappy with the company culture

The Top 3 Career Moves Contractors Want To Make:
• Become a full-time employee at a company
• Do the same work with different clients
• Start their own business

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By partnering with an experienced staffing agency like SMCI, companies can anticipate potential catalysts for dissatisfaction among both contractors and full-time employees, and take the appropriate measures to prevent them from being lured away. Contractors, in particular, want more challenging work, a clear path to advancement and inclusion in evolving the company culture.

Changing Jobs Is Hard; But Increasingly Worth It to Employees

Another aspect of the survey looked at the different obstacles faced by both contractors and full-time talent when changing jobs.

According to the results, contractors are slightly more prone to negative experiences with recruiters. For instance, some contractors report being contacted for a role that doesn’t match their professional background or career aspirations.

Also, contractors reported being contacted by recruiters who didn’t provide them with enough information on the role. Last but not least, contractors are also more likely to apply for a job and never hear back.

In contrast, full-time workers experienced less of these inconveniences but more of those traditionally associated with career changes, like not knowing what it’s like to work for their new company, and difficulties surround salary negotiations, titles, etc.

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By understanding the recruitment process and the different experiences of contractors and full-time employees, companies can better tailor their employee experiences so that contractors are treated more like full-time employees and are thus less likely to experience job fatigue and aggravation, factors which make them more susceptible to being poached by a competitor.

How to Use This Survey to Help Mitigate Turnover

For staffing firms and specifically recruiters, the LinkedIn survey’s authors neatly prescribe three methods for using this data to your benefit.

They suggest striving to provide contractors with higher quality information about specific job opportunities and focusing on generating better matching roles for this population.

Furthermore, they emphasize that interactions with a recruiter are a major determining factor in whether or not a candidate chooses to work with you. This would indicate that the quality and training of recruiters is pretty important.

Finally, the survey’s detailed data on the journey that job seekers take provides an excellent roadmap for staffing firms to determine the placement of their company’s message along the way.

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At SMCI, we pay close attention to surveys and research like the LinkedIn study. We strive to stay ahead of trends and changes in the staffing landscape so that we are better able to advise our clients on how to not only bring in the best talent for a specific role, but also how to keep that talent engaged and employed at your company.

In Summary

For companies, the biggest take away is that a huge percentage of people are open to hearing about new job opportunities. This makes the relationship with your staffing agency or recruitment partner more important than ever.

The modern economy, job market and societal preferences have resulted in a fundamental increase in the hustle and a sharp decrease in company loyalty. Today, more people are actively looking for new jobs at a higher rate and for reasons other than just pay and benefits, although those are still very important.

Companies who partner with staffing firms like SMCI, who understand what full-time employees and contractors are looking for, and where they are looking for it, stand a much better chance of reducing turnover and keeping top employees happy and on staff.

Call SMCI today at 818-240-3177 and find out what we can do to keep your company’s team at work.